by Barnana Sarkar.  

We are thrilled to announce that the most anticipated event of the year started on a high note. Day 1 was all about exploring the theme of this year’s MoodleMoot Global, ‘Lifelong learning’. We not only engaged with like-minded educators, experts, and Moodlers from around the globe but also welcomed leading industry keynote speakers.
Let’s take a look at some of the highlights from Day 1!
Opening keynote and welcome message

The event started with Marie Achour, Moodle Global Head of Product, who greeted everyone in her welcome speech. She gave us a glimpse of what was scheduled for the day – right from a fantastic speaker lineup to the highlights of the upcoming Moodle LMS 4.3 release.

Following the welcome speech, our Founder, Martin Dougiamas, delivered his keynote presentation on ‘Lifelong intelligence’ focusing on how artificial intelligence is changing education and the workplace. 

During his keynote presentation, Martin shared that the more he engaged with AI, the more he came to appreciate the nuances of human education, voice, and intent. He emphasised the importance of understanding the depth and meaning behind words and how this highlights the significance of education in today’s world. His presentation underscored the need for a balanced approach that harnesses AI’s capabilities while valuing and preserving the richness of human communication and education. 

Morning sessions at MoodleMoot Global

Day 1 at MoodleMoot Global began with vibrant discussions, ranging from open-source education principles to advancements in AI for virtual classrooms. Brett Dalton from Moodle HQ elaborated on the essence of open platforms and standards, highlighting the importance of collaborative digital learning. Simultaneously, Fred Dixon from Blindside Networks showcased AI’s role in enhancing virtual learning experiences and using analytics for student support.

The day’s discourse also touched on AI-generated content’s academic implications and the evolving tech in education. Kate Bazilevskaya from Tiny further provided insights into the UX challenges faced in generative AI, revealing complexities educators and designers encounter when aiming for intuitive interfaces.

The second half of Day 1

Day 1’s second half showcased impactful presentations. Willian Mano Araujo delved into the ‘Evoke Game in Moodle’, revealing outcomes of the World Bank’s Evoke project aimed at addressing global challenges innovatively, including using AI-generated content. He stressed the game mechanics in Moodle, like avatars and badges, as rewards that signify a commitment to skill enhancement.

Another key talk was ‘Women in (Ed)Tech’, presented by Amaia Anabitarte and Sara Arjona from Moodle HQ. It highlighted challenges women face in the EdTech sector, spotlighting real-world experiences and the gender ratio among open source contributors. This ignited a dialogue, with several attendees sharing their narratives.

Networking drinks and Music Jam Night

Day 1 concluded on an exciting note! Firstly, the networking drinks provided everyone with a relaxed and enjoyable atmosphere to connect and network. It was a fantastic opportunity for Moodlers from around the world to come together, share experiences, and build valuable connections.

Following the networking drinks, the evening continued with a lively “Music Jam Night.” This inclusive and friendly gathering welcomed individuals of all skill levels to explore the joy of making music together. We had the chance to join in and experience the thrill of performing on stage at Jamboree, in Barcelona. The night was a celebration of global culture and camaraderie, ensuring that everyone who took the stage received the well-deserved applause from their fellow Moodlers. 

Find out more in our Day 1 recap blog, and also see what’s in store for Day 2.

Hello, as a follow up to rubidity gem – ruby for layer (l1) contracts / protocols language machinery i have started to collect notes on the new rubidity (blockchain) contract programming language that now has two styles – the original “classic” and the more ruby-ish update (i am working on). anyways, python has vyper¹ and now ruby will SOON! have rubidity for contract programming “on-chain” or “off-chain”. It’s still (very) early. I invite you to join the fun and let’s explore and learn together building a typed programming machinery in ruby (100% compatible with solidity types & abis).

 

I’m pleased to announce the release of Python 3.12 release candidate 3.

https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-3120rc3/

 

This is the second release candidate of Python 3.12.0

This release, 3.12.0rc3, is the absolutely last release preview for Python 3.12.

There will be no ABI changes from this point forward
in the 3.12 series. The intent is for the final release of 3.12.0,
scheduled for Monday, 2023-10-02, to be identical to this release
candidate. This really is the last chance to find critical problems in Python 3.12.

Call to action

We strongly encourage maintainers of third-party Python projects to
prepare their projects for 3.12 compatibilities during this phase, and
where necessary publish Python 3.12 wheels on PyPI to be ready for the
final release of 3.12.0. Any binary wheels built against Python
3.12.0rc3 will work with future versions of Python 3.12. As always,
report any issues to the Python bug tracker.

Please keep in mind that this is a preview release and while it’s as close to the final release as we can get it, its use is not recommended for production environments.

Core developers: time to work on documentation now

• Are all your changes properly documented?
• Are they mentioned in What’s New?
• Did you notice other changes you know of to have insufficient documentation?

 

Major new features of the 3.12 series, compared to 3.11

 

New features

• More flexible f-string parsing, allowing many things previously disallowed (PEP 701).
• Support for the buffer protocol in Python code (PEP 688).
• A new debugging/profiling API (PEP 669).
• Support for isolated subinterpreters with separate Global Interpreter Locks (PEP 684).
• Even more improved error messages. More exceptions potentially caused by typos now make suggestions to the user.
• Support for the Linux perf profiler to report Python function names in traces.
• Many large and small performance improvements (like PEP 709 and support for the BOLT binary optimizer), delivering an estimated 5% overall performance improvement^{citation needed}.

Type annotations

• New type annotation syntax for generic classes (PEP 695).
• New override decorator for methods (PEP 698).

Deprecations

• The deprecated wstr and wstr_length members of the C implementation of unicode objects were removed, per PEP 623.
• In the unittest module, a number of long deprecated methods and classes were removed. (They had been deprecated since Python 3.1 or 3.2).
• The deprecated smtpd and distutils modules have been removed (see PEP 594 and PEP 632. The setuptools package continues to provide the distutils module.
• A number of other old, broken and deprecated functions, classes and methods have been removed.
• Invalid backslash escape sequences in strings now warn with SyntaxWarning instead of DeprecationWarning, making them more visible. (They will become syntax errors in the future.)
• The internal representation of integers has changed in preparation
  for performance enhancements. (This should not affect most users as it
  is an internal detail, but it may cause problems for Cython-generated
  code.)

(Hey, fellow core developer, if a feature you find important is missing from this list, let Thomas know.)

For more details on the changes to Python 3.12, see What’s new in Python 3.12. The next scheduled release of Python 3.12 will be 3.12.0, the final release, currently scheduled for 2023-10-02.

 

More resources

• Online Documentation.
• PEP 693, the Python 3.12 Release Schedule.
• Report bugs via GitHub Issues.
• Help fund Python and its community.

 

Enjoy the new release

However almost every “circle” you can see in printed media (and most purely digital ones) are not, in fact, circles. Why is this? Since roughly the mid 80s all “high quality” print jobs have been done either in PostScript or, nowadays almost exclusively, in PDF. They use the same basic drawing model, which does not have a primitive for circles (or circle arcs). The only primitives they have are straight line segments, rectangles and Bézier curves. None of these can be used to express a circle accurately. You can only do an approximation of a circle but it is always slightly eccentric. The only way to create a proper circle is to have a raster image like the one above. Shouldn’t be that big of a deal, right? I’m sure nobody is using PDF for anything that would require the kind of precision needed for a perfect circle, like CAD drawings for laser cutters and similar machinery. Right? Again one might ask whether this has any practical impact. For this case, again, probably not. But did you know that one of the cases PDF is being considered (and, based on Internet rumors, is already being used) is as an interchange format for CAD drawings? Now it suddenly starts mattering. If you have any component where getting a really accurate circle shape is vital (like pistons and their holes), suddenly all your components are slightly misshaped. Which would not be fun. This is why we can’t have nice things.